Review: CowCow Mouse Pad Playmats

Unable to wait for the official solutions, but wanting to upgrade from the printed paper that I had in binder sleeves to play this game, I sought other options for Dice Masters playmats.

Luckily, the community is on the ball and the answers are out there.

I found a solution at the website CowCow.com. CowCow, it seems, is a site where users can create and order customized products like mouse pads and such - and it just so happens that their large sized mouse pad is a nice size for a dice mat for this game. Several users have designed them and I've ordered mine. Here are my impressions and some details on how you might acquire one.
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This is it in the pictures above and below. Really, it's pretty simple - just the play area - but it gets the job done. All of the zones are large enough to fit all of the dice without feeling too cluttered, and you can get an idea of what the dice look like in relation to the size of the thing.

The background is some X-Men-related artwork. There are little X-Men logos - the circled X - surrounding it on all sides and a life track on the bottom. I know some of you like to use D20s for life; I slide a little D6 along the life track, and we'll also use the D6 to roll for first player. But that's just me.

These are quite durable, about as durable as your average mouse pad (and for good reason). Of course, anything would be better than the paper that I was using, but the point stands. Since it is based on a mouse pad, the back has a rubbery grip to it and so it is unlikely to move around on just about any surface, a big plus for this game.

Sidekick dice are in our favorite part of the mat for scale.

It basically fits within the same footprint as the Plano box in which I store my dice - it's slightly wider -so transport is easy as it never seems to be in the way. I was on a trip this weekend and we brought some games with us; I discovered that I could fit all of my Dice Masters stuff, including these playmats, in a box and still have room for everything that I needed for Summoner Wars, Fiasco, and a spare slot for Love Letter, all in a standard-sized Fantasy Flight box. I don't think this is impressive, I just want to emphasize that these take up very little room!

Do you want one yourself? This is the one that I ordered.I know that they have others on the site, but this is what caught my eye. I know that they were accepting code MarvelDice10 at checkout, which would provide you two mats for $4.00, including shipping. That made it a no-brainer - an easy purchase. Shipping took about two weeks.

And if I upgrade down the line to an official mat? Well, now I have a couple of fancy mouse pads. Can't beat that!

Comments

I used someone else's PSD file to modify their layout. I changed the background images, and lowered the saturation on the zones as they were a little brighter then what I was looking for. Still waiting for them to arrive, but they are here;